Festival international de jardins de Métis

Half Acre Project: Garden-dwelling-activism

Around the globe, humans are accepting the problems inherent to consumer culture. The very biological support systems relied upon for survival are being destroyed in pursuit of money and power. As activists designing our dream-home, we ask: How much of our essential needs can we glean from half an acre? Garden-dwellings can provide clean water, food, shelter and energy, offering solutions to resource over-consumption and waste mis-management. Visitors explore the iconic strawbale cabin, curious about the greenhouse and plants enveloping it. Signboards reveal the concepts as weary bodies pause on curvy benches. Rain is the lifeblood that courses down the passive solar roof, into the cistern and out the sink, where people become participants in nourishing the edible landscape by washing their hands. Outside, the circular greywatered garden beds form the Roerich Symbol, internationally established to protect monuments of historical and cultural importance from aerial bombing in WWII. Here, we plea for the protection of biological wealth and the knowledge required to take action and localize our resources.

Terraculture:

Emily Rose Michaud (Artist, Educator)

Andrew McKay (Ecological Construction, Research, Design, Contracting)

Wakefield and Montréal, (Québec), Canada.

Terraculture are an artist-builder team working at the intersections of community, civic participation and Permaculture. From a background of conceptual installation, Land Art, ecological construction and education, Terraculture’s events seed re-enchantment with the natural world. Fostering DIY action through self-reliant building and gardening techniques, they explore solutions to secure clean air, water, soil and energy for generations to come. Terraculture are currently planning a Half Acre Project in the Outaouais region of Québec, a full-scale version of their proposal to the Garden Festival.

In what way will our project contribute to the renewal of the garden?

‘Half Acre Project: Garden-dwelling-activism’ offers a physical opportunity for the public to re-engage with the concept of home and garden as the main provider of essential needs. Shifting away from aesthetic formality, utopian gardeners will pledge allegiance to their plants and buildings and depend on them for water, food, shelter, waste recycling and energy. Oil barons will go extinct as citizens and whole communities re-learn how to localize their resources through land stewardship.